I see David Waddington and Norman Tebbitt are still the same old homophobes they always were-despite belonging to the “new” conservative party. Looks like their prujudices will die when they do. Fortunately-they will not have long to wait.

And here I was thinking the Bible prohibited telling lies. Of course, when you’re a PROPER Christian, you can just pick and choose the bits of the Bible you like…

SimonM – I agree with what you’re saying about civil marriage. It is disgusting that gay people are discriminated against in this way. I AM glad that Lord Alli spoke out though – I want these liars shown up. Sad that the only way they can drum up support now is by lying.

SimonM and Iris, I echo your views totally. What is even more disgusting is that some of our very own gay and lesbian brothers and sisters are also against civil marriage equality. Just look at StonewallUK for starters. We need a rival group to counter their anti full equality agenda and get our straight allies on board, I know they exist. We need to be more vocal, proactive in starting a civil marriage equality movement going just as they did in Canada and elsewhere. Look what happened, eight countries now allowing us to have a civil marriage. If our government were truly interested in full equality, it would have followed suit. The argument that we would have not gained any rights if they had, is just a lame excuse not to have any confrontation from the state cult, among others. Its feeble at best when you consider three catholic countries, particularly Spain, Portugal and Belgium were facing far stronger resistance from the roman cult, a force far more powerful than the C of E. Religious cults have absolutely no moral authority to interfere with civil marriage and the sooner our government, whichever party is in power, learned that, the better our chances are of making it happen. They’re all a bunch of cowards, no backbone, no character. Why vote for that, no matter the party? They’ve taken our votes for granted for far too long. The sooner we change that, we’ll get somewhere.

“True, it is not marriage, but it is better then the half hearted proposals contained in “the Civil Partnership Bill 2009″ in front of the Irish parliament at the moment ”

But at least Ireland has an active and vocal marriage equality movement. Unlike Britain.

GLEN (the Irish equivalent of Stonewall) accepts that the CP Bill is inadequate and unjust and will continue to campaign for full equality once the CP Bill is enacted.

Unlike the Gay Uncle Toms of Stonewall who are opposed to marriage equality for fear of annoying their government paymasters.

When the CP Bill becomes law in Ireland this year, there won’t be a single, political party in Ireland who will be pretending that gay couples now have legal equality – like the Labour and the Tories currently do in the UK.

SimonM, you still don’t get it. You are being very dense here… Civil marriage equality would leave a two-tier situation in which gay people were unequal. This is about religious freedom. Civil marriage equality would be one good step but it would still allow straight people to have their religious weddings legally recognised, while gay people were denied that right.

What about the gay couples who want their religious weddings to be legally recognised in the same way that their straight counterparts are???

If we are going to go for marriage equality (as we should) then it is either all or nothing. No halfway house of civil marriage equality only.

A church is fully entitled to deny a straight couple a religious wedding at present. A divorced catholic is not allowed to remarry in a catholic church. A catholic couple who refuse to complete the catholic course about marriage is not allowed to marry in a church. A catholic woman who declares that she will continue taking the Pill can be denied a marriage in a catholic church.

A gay catholic will not be allowed to get a CP in a church (even if the law permitted it)

A religious wedding has ZERO legal standing until a couple signs the civil register. Seeing as religious weddings are legally worthless until the civil register is signed, these efforts to allow CP’s be held in church are a waste of time. They don’t require any church to perform gay CP’s – they can chose to do them if they like. Absolutely no requirement.

Simply extend civil marriage to gay couples; CP’s to straight couples, and let the religions do what they want. Their ceremonies are legally meaningless until the civil register is signed anyway. If Civil marriage is equalised then they can chose to perform same sex ceremonies which can be legally binding in the same way that opposite sex ceremnonies currently are.

These attempts are merely efforts to disguise the fact that gay couples are denied access to the legal contract of civil marriage because of our sexual orientation.

Weldone Lord Alli; it takes a strong man who knows his fight to go all that length. But I suppose it would be much much useful if you channel all that energy into equalizing for civil marriage for LGBT instead of window-dressing the already existing C.P. Like expressed above, churches can still refuse to celebrate the weddings and as you put it, “if they chose to”. just like baptism, people will still have to meet the church’s conditions as put in their canon laws. Even presently as rightly pointed out, some straight people cannot wed in a church of their choice if they dont meet certain conditions.
The needed and needful thing is just to alter the hinderances in the marriage act and allow it to be open to all as well as C.P. so couples can chose what they wish to have.
Thanks again Alli

SimonM, you’re right of course that civil marriage should be extended to all couples regardless of gender. But you’re wrong that religious marriage has no legal standing.

There are two ways of starting a marriage. The civil way involves a ceremony in front of a registrar who countersigns the marriage schedule (that’s what it’s called in Scots law – the term in England may differ) and then takes it away to fill in the register.

The religious way involves a religious service as part of which an authorised member of the religion (eg minister, priest, rabbi etc) countersigns the schedule in place of the registrar. So the religious person is effectively delegated the job of solemnising the marriage, in place of the registrar. (The couple then submit the signed schedule to the registrar for later registering).

The marriage legally begins during the ceremony, not at the later time when the registrar copies the contents of the schedule into the register.

So the religious ceremony has legal standing, and although I am an atheist, I understand why it is important to many same-sex couples of faith, and their friends in their faith communities, to be able to do a legally effective ceremony of same-sex marriage also. Last night I was at a meeting to discuss marriage equality, with Unitarians, Quakers and Liberal Jews in Edinburgh, all of whom want to be able to do this.

Why deny them? Equality means equality, surely, and since mixed-sex marriage is started by legally-effective ceremonies in two flavours, civil or religious, surely same-sex marriage should have the same options?

But why bother going to all this unnecessary effort to allow churches perform CP’s

It would be far simpler and more convenient (not to mention just) to extend civil marriage to same sex couple; CP’s to opposite sex couples and let the churches do whatever they like (which they currently do anyway – a church is under no obligation to marry a straight couple who do not meet their requirements after all).

If civil marriage is equalised then a church can decide whether or not it wants to marry a same sex couple. There is absolutely no need for this legislation. It is window dressing to disguise our 2nd class status under the law.

And let’s remember the VAST majority of churches will refuse to carry out same sex weddings – even if they were allowed to perform them.